The man, black hat on down to his ear lobes, a lit cigarette in his shaking hand, an old trench coat that was probably a couple of sizes too large for him, kept walking. He then saw her. His heart beat faster. The moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived. He sighed. She, on the other side, did not.
“Well, do you want it?” she asked almost without care and concern.
“Do you have it?” he said.
“I certainly do”, she answered, smiling coyly.
“Can I see it?”
“Do you doubt my word?” She responded a bit annoyed.
“No, no, I don’t doubt your word, but I have to see it first. It is too expensive and I usually don’t have that kind of money for this sort of thing.”
She hesitated and looked at him with suspicion. “Follow me,” she answered. Then they both walked to the opposite sidewalk.
“Be careful,” she warned in a low voice. “You never know when a cop is going to see you and catch you. If one stops us, you and I don’t know each other. You are just asking for directions, OK?”
“Good enough.” He took another puff of smoke in his lungs.
They walked, more briskly now, towards a run down house without lights that was in the middle of the block and was surrounded by a tall old wooden fence and some shrubbery. She opened the fence gate and signaled him to come in, not without first making sure no one saw them. He followed eagerly.
“How good is it?” he asked with anxiety.
“Good enough… what do you think? It is regular quality.”
“Regular?”
“Yes; and expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“ What? A thousand dollars for a gallon of regular gas? Are you crazy?”
“Yes, a thousand dollars; and that Rolex watch in your wrist also. The money has to be split with my gas dealer, but the watch is for my boyfriend….”
A Point of View
“A thousand dollar nightmare Revisited.”
By Paul V. Montesino, PhD.
Now, if you think the above dialogue-it was not about what you expected, was it?-is fiction, think again. All you have to do is take a look at what is going on in the world today and realize that the possibility that we are going to go through real pain just to buy a gallon of gasoline to get a few more miles from our inefficient family car is not only possible but highly probable as well. The events we have been witnessing for the past few months are evidence that support our point of view. When we first published this article in February of 2006 many folks thought it was fiction. Now the fiction is becoming more real and it is you and I who could become fictional. The price of barrel of oil was less than fifty percent of what is today, $60 in February of 2006. And we thought it was bad. Now it is $135. And gasoline prices at $2.24 back then is over $4 now and nowhere to go but up.
Go to any supermarket or mall parking lot these days-we said then-and you find yourself surrounded by SUVs that not only block your view when you try to squeeze out of your parking space, but waste more gasoline than is needed to get from here to there, or return. But, of course, not always it is a SUV that does it. In other cases it is a truck driven by someone who probably could walk as well instead. But that is what we saw then. Recently Ford Motor Company announced a drastic reduction in SUV and truck production to accommodate for the sudden loss in consumer interest for those gas behemoths. SUVs and recreational trucks are going in the direction of “Ford Model’s T,” becoming dinosaurs.
But the evidence goes beyond car sizes on the parking lots or the crowded highways. Look at the daily news all over the world and our own nation and you will see how oil is seeping into every part of our lives in one way or the other. It is happening slowly, but surely. Governments that control the oil spigot are behind accusations and demonstrations about our way of life or our political or economic system on a daily basis. Whether it is Iran with its threat of nuclear expansion and its outrageous interpretation of history; Venezuela selling cheaper oil to poor inner city Americans directly and skipping our elected governmental institutions but meddling on other folks’ affairs or Middle Eastern governments manipulating the masses to arise and react against a small newspaper nobody ever knew before for publishing a senseless cartoon, oil is the new power broker.
And the high energy prices become part of almost anything we consume, things that we use or services we receive. Some airlines are now replacing First and Business class sections by charging for thirteen inches extra between some seats in coach or for the luggage we need to carry. Would flying naked be cheaper in the future? And whether it is the price of bread or milk and anything else we eat or drink, the reality is that all of those products require the use of transportation to be delivered to your friendly store and yes, transportation, needs fuel as well.
You know we are in real trouble when the Vice President of the United States goes once to the Middle East and the President twice to beg our Arab oil suppliers for a break in production.“We are hooked on oil,” the president insists. It has become his number one mantra. The second, of course, is winning in Iraq. What a shame! And it gets worse. No one has any idea what the three presidential contenders will do to solve the problem. Perhaps when they stop flying so much from one primary contest to the other the demand and the prices will come down.
We are arguing about preachers of the left or the right who will always preach any sermon they want whenever they want. Did I hear someone by the name of Thomas Jefferson say that there has to be a separation between Church and State? And we hear discrepancies of opinion about misguided foreign policies that don’t work today and will not work tomorrow either unless we change them in content and context, both of which we have no idea what they are going to be when they are changed. In other ways, we are navigating blind in a car that costs us more and more to drive.
Is it possible that I will have to revisit this nightmarish story in another two years to reflect on still another doubling of energy prices? Well, who knows. I remember when we made political, economic and cultural jokes about the Chinese communist masses use of bicycles for their normal transportation needs or lack of modern energy resources in their factories. Today China, as well as India, is becoming one of the greatest users of energy in the world and is one of the main reasons for the spike in oil prices. I suppose the joke is on us now. We dared them to imitate our economic system and they took the challenge word for word. One should be careful about what ones wishes for; it could become reality.
But who cares? I am out of here riding my old bike. “See folks, no hands!” It is only my point of view today.
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